Telecommunications networks are known that employ redundancy mechanisms for providing high availability of telecommunications systems, devices, and/or other resources within the respective networks. Such redundancy mechanisms typically involve an active device and at least one standby device, and provide high availability of resources within telecommunications networks by switching over to activate the standby device when the corresponding active device fails or is taken out of service. Such redundancy mechanisms are particularly important in the operation of session border controllers and other network security devices, which are frequently called upon to provide 99.999% (such 99.999% is also referred to herein as “five 9's”) reliability and availability due to the critical roles such devices play in the operation of telecommunications networks. For example, redundancy mechanisms employed in conjunction with such network security devices are generally required to determine a variety of failures and/or faults associated with the respective devices, and to make failover decisions based on the results of such failure and/or fault determinations. However, typical redundancy mechanisms employed in known telecommunications networks may not provide the desired minimal impact on the telecommunications networks when performing such switchovers from active to standby devices, and may not provide the desired level of user control over failover decision making. Such redundancy mechanisms may also fail to take complete account of the deterministic behaviors of the devices when making such failover decisions.
It would therefore be desirable to have improved systems and methods of providing high availability of telecommunications systems and devices that avoid at least some of the drawbacks of typical redundancy mechanisms employed in known telecommunications networks.